Steele High School - Annual Yearbook (Dayton, OH)

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THE ANNUAL Page twenty-live WHERE LAY THE FAULT? By EDMUND BARKEMEYER HE had come back. Darley Lare had come back. This piece of news, whispered from one person to another, was enough to set all heads in Braunsberg nodding, and to stir the village into a ripple of unusual excitement. It would be worth while trying to picture Brauns- berg as it stood that day, feet deep in fallen leaves, rimmed by moun- tain ranges, and over all the blue sky. Silence was characteristic of the place. There were no sounds in the air, no hammering, no sign of industry, only the cry of a bird, or the shriek of a locomotive far away. The shuttered houses looked desolate and lifeless. Even the streets were quiet. Once or twice a child, escaping from the thick atmosphere of the low buildings, appeared and rapidly disappeared, as if instructed by his guardians not to breathe the fresh, pure air. Once or twice the shutters of a house opened then closed again- that was all. Life seemed to have taken its departure. But for all this peaceful exterior, Braunsberg did not lack its gossips. In parlors, in dark kitchens, and in the other rooms that they called sitting rooms, great interchange of neighborly chat was going on. There was Liddy. She had just come back from the city, and having the reputation of a high talented speaker, everybody had gathered around her, listening to her wonderfully constructed sentences, pouring forth as mighty thunder, varying in tone and pitch. There was Heddy, explaining in a very satis- factory way how to make apple butter more juicy, and how to raise young chickens, then suddenly changing her subject to the topic of the day-Dar- ley's return. And behind the door, having been told to leave the room, were Tepsy and Lisse, on the very tiptoe of curiosity, doing their best to overhear everything through a chink of the door. Who's Darley Lare? Tepsy asked, fishing the name out of the tantal- izing hum, hum, hum of the low voices. I don't know, replied Lisse, with eyes wide open, some awful person I guess. Poor Darley! It was not very long-live or six years at the most-since she left her native village, and she was already forgotten, her name being a strange sound to the ears of that generation that now usurped her place. She was not awful then. The old people remembered her, a willful, beau- tiful girl, carrying all before her with the impetuosity of youth, llirting now with this man, now with that stranger, breaking more than one heart. Every one remembered the time of her engagement with Thomas, that handsome

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Page twenty-four THE ANNUAL Some of the oldest inhabitants will tell you that they remember the time when the city was a great shipping center surrounded on three sides by the Hoang-ho, and they declare that it changed its bed in a single night. When the lights were extinguished in the homes that night in 1852, the city was threatened with the worst flood they had ever known, but with the first stirrings of a new day it was found that there was only the muddy bed left to show that there had even been a river at all. No one seems to know just how old the city is, but it is certain that it was a flourishing port at the time of the overthrow of Babylon. To our eyes unaccustomed to such antiquity the city wall appeared to be thousands of years old, but the inhabitants call it new, for it has only three or four hundred years to its credit. The houses as viewed from the wall seem to be thrown together in a promiscous fashion. We find the Yamen of the official or the home of the millionaire side by side with the mud hut of the poorest coolie, wealth and abundance rubbing elbows with abject poverty. It is a country of sharp contrasts-the high official in his silken robes sitting at ease in his richly furnished sedan chair is carried on the backs of dirty coolies, scantily clothed even in winter, and earning the few cash they will receive for their labor by the sweat of their brow. The strangest thing about it all is the feeling of being a curiosity when one goes out and it is hard to get used to being called foreigner, Wherever you go there is sure to be a curious crowd following and when you turn and ask them sharply why they follow you, not at all embarrassed. they will calmly answer that they only wanted to Can Can Clook, seej. A tour of the shops is made with difficulty on account of the interest manifested in your prospective purchases by every one who passes. The maiority of the shops are open to the street and all the customer has to do is to step up on the narrow platform before the counter and ask for what he wants. There is nothing to tempt the would-be buyer. One must ask for the exact article he wants and, failing to get it, there is no substitute offered. In fact, one is made to feel that the shop-keeper is conferring a favor to wait upon you at all. In the silk shop we are invited to a room in the rear where we are given seats and shown the fabrics in that leisurely fashion that only an Oriental can assume. Failing to find what we want here we are escorted to a room farther back, and the process of elimination continuing, we finally find ourselves in the very rear room, small and dingy, but here we are shown the richest silks, the pride of the shop-keeper's heart. Few there be who enter here, for the room is jealously guarded-hence the reason for its be- ing the last one. After making our purchases we go out to the street again where our chairs are waiting for us. Down the narrow street our bearers swing us with the peculiar cry of the chair coolies, and our shopping expedition is over,

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Page twemgsk THE ANNUAL fellow, and every one remembered the looks after Darley had broken the engagement and had vanished from home, and from her aunt. Saying at first that Darley had gone to visit some of her relatives, old Miss Lare had told them that she had left her without explaining the cause of her sudden departure. A dark shadow rested over the fate of this village-child, until now, at the return of the girl-a girl no more-it had been lifted. But when did she come back? asked Mrs. Wayder, breathlessly. This morning, replied Miss Heddy, taking up her needle work again. My son went down to the depot to get some freight with his team, and he fetched her along. She was silent and didn't speak, and how she was changed, he said. She told him to drive to the house where her aunt-God bless her-used to live. 'Perhaps they'll take me in there to board,' says she, and burst right out crying. My son felt pretty bad about it, and he took her there and fixed it up all right. Well, I just hope somebody'll come and get her and care for her. He says she looks so yellow and thin and has such a cough-well, I must be goin'. Mother, cried Tepsy and Lisse, unable to resist any longerg who is that Darley you and Miss Heddy were talking about? You'd better be quiet. She was a poor girl, who didn't have it as good as you're having it, and she's come back. You'd better go and see if the chickens have their corn. It's time they'd be getting some. And in the excitement of their work Tepsy and Lisse soon forgot their curiosity. But the mother did not forget, and she prayed long and fervently that day, for the lost wanderer who had come back to the village. In the meantime Darley was lying in bed, where as a child she had slept beside her aunt. The room was little changed. There was the old clock, still ticking in the same old melancholy wayg there was the old oak shelf in the corner, where Miss Lare's Bible had its place. There was the mirror which had reflected a young, beautiful face in those daysg there was the blind through which the sun had greeted her, inviting her to enjoy herself in God's beautiful nature. Darley pursued her recollections with languid interest. She felt tired-too tired to rise. She would rest for a day or two, and then she would feel better. She wondered if anybody would visit herg and for the first time in these years that she had been away from her birthplace, a pain- ful curiosity to know what had been said of her absence awoke in her mind. Her kind aunt was dead. Would her former friends desert her, too? Darley closed her eyes, then opened them again and tossed restlessly. All that day and the next she lay in the room-ill and feverish. Her landladyhgrought her tea and crackers twice a day, but a sharp, inquisitive manner d taken the place of her former good nature. Her story must have beenntold to her. Vllhy had she come back? There seemed to be a power drawing her back with an immense force-a power irresistible,